


Gracefully

by tiamatv



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Castiel/Dean Winchester, Future Fic, Lawyer Sam Winchester, M/M, Retired Hunter Winchesters (Supernatural), Sam's Got Twins God Help Him, Teacher Dean Winchester, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Uncle Cas is the Kids' Favorite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24433840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv
Summary: Getting older wasn’t really much fun. Dean’s back and sometimes his knees reminded him of this on the daily.With Cas leaning on his shoulder and frowning at the laptop, it couldn't be all bad, though.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Comments: 18
Kudos: 170





	Gracefully

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of fluffy, fluffy, retired hunters fluff. Unbetaed, but nonetheless I found it very enjoyable to write. :) Completely not canon referential in any way, but I wanted the boyos to have something happy.
> 
> The T-rating is really just because Dean (still) has quite a mouth on him.

Getting older wasn’t really much fun. Dean’s back and sometimes his knees reminded him of this on the daily.

It wasn’t terrible, though. Maybe _sometimes_ he had to squint to read off the computer screen—no, Sammy, he did _not_ want a pair of reading glasses. Just ‘cause Sammy used them didn’t mean that Dean had to. And yeah, picking up one of the kids wasn’t as easy as it had been once upon a time, and Dean never wanted to go toe to toe with a wendigo if he could help it ever again. But age wasn’t _just_ a number when there had been a pretty long period there where Dean had been sure he’d never hit forty. Compared to that, none of all the little twinges and bumps and aches and pains were really all that bad.

“Oh,” Castiel said, and shifted in his seat.

With how he was saying it, Dean thought that could mean that he was discovering again that clothes could sometimes be itchy. Or that he’d found something on the laptop that was about to imminently eat the world and he wanted Dean’s opinion on it. It could really be either-or.

Right.

Dean cracked open his eyes from his half-nap and glanced just slightly to his left.

Cas was sitting close on their old fake-leather sofa—way too close, ‘Cas, we’ve talked about personal space’ close. His chin hovered a few millimeters above Dean’s shoulder, and with Dean’s movement, his nose was almost against Dean’s cheekbone. His breath brushed lightly over Dean’s cheek. All of their height difference was in Dean’s legs—sitting like this, Cas’s eyes were exactly at Dean’s eye level, and blue enough to tear the sky open.

“Uh. Hi,” Dean told him.

“Hello,” Cas answered, the same as always. He blinked, once, as if confused about how exactly he’d ended up sitting where he was. He was so close Dean wondered if he could feel the tiny brushing fan of his eyelashes.

So _yeah_ , Dean turned his face just a little more to catch his lips, loose and soft, laughing as Cas craned in towards him with a soft contented noise.

Okay, so maybe these days it was less ‘personal space, Cas,’ and more the ‘Guys, _come on_ , not in front of the kids,’ type of close.

“I think…” but Castiel’s expression was solemn and serious as he reached up and pressed just his index fingertip to Dean’s head—just in front of his right ear. “ _Hmm_.”

“If you’re looking for my brain, angel,” Dean chuckled, tipping his head just enough to keep Cas in view as that finger kept wandering in a tickle along his hairline, “It’s gonna be awhile, you sucked it outta my dick this morning.”

Cas reared back to scowl at him, and his finger stopped just behind Dean’s ear. “ _Dean._ That’s crass.”

Dean smirked back, and dropped another kiss on the corner of that damned irresistible pouty mouth. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”

“Also, I’m not a wraith of any variety.”

He kind of loved how insistent Cas looked when he said that. “Also true, you’re too fucking hot for that,” Dean agreed, cheerfully. “And I wouldn’t want any of ‘em near my dick anyway.”

It’d been a long time since Dean had thought too hard about the fact that yeah, he could say things like that aloud, yeah, he could _mean them_ , and most importantly, no-one who lived in their home thought it was weird. (The other adult residents of the bunker might not _want_ to hear Dean saying anything of the sort, sure. But they’d heard it all often enough that if Dean ever stopped saying things like that, Dean suspected they’d probably start poking him with silver.)

“ _Hmph_.”

If Cas didn’t know by now that slightly embarrassed and grouchy angel was just about Dean’s favorite look on him, Dean certainly wasn’t gonna be the one to tell him.

Especially since today Cas was dressed up in full Dean Winchester chic, nothing but Dean’s own clothes. Mm- _mm_.

Dean slung around and reeled Cas back in with an arm around his shoulders—he was wearing those sweatpants that probably made his thighs illegal in half the states and one of Dean’s flannels, washed so often that it was pilling pretty much everywhere. There was a split along one of the shoulder seams. Dean poked his finger into the little hole, ran the pad against just that flash of pale skin. Cas was still giving him grumpyface when Dean chuckled and rested his own chin on Cas’s shoulder. “Okay, okay. I’ll bite.” He puffed, playfully, against Cas’s neck. “What?”

“Yes, you _do_ bite,” Cas pointed out.

Cas had gotten pretty good, but Dean had caught the little twitch of his shoulder from where it was loose and relaxed under Dean’s face. He smirked and dug his chin in. “I’ll have you know, I can tell when you’re being literal on purpose these days.”

Cas squinted at him, but ultimately it looked like he was going to ignore that. His finger came up and tapped at Dean’s temple again. “You have a grey hair here,” he noted, very solemn. He traced a circle like he was lifting it to examine it. He probably was. “I think it is your first.”

Oh. Huh. Dean didn’t pay enough attention to his hair that he’d ever have noticed that, he thought—not on himself, at least. Cas’s hair was still silky jet-dark all over, of course, though he actually combed it into place most days. Probably because Cas was such a sucker for the kids. Dean’s niece and possibly even the twins found it really fun to stick their fingers into that neat hair and muss him back up. (Mary might have gotten the idea from watching Dean do it so often. As for the twins, Dean wasn’t really sure if they found it fun or if they were just trying to eat it.)

“Happy birthday to it, I guess. Should we throw it a party?” Dean asked, his tongue poking into his cheek.

Cas blinked. “Oh. Should we?”

“Uh. _No_ ,” he chuckled, and nudged Cas’s knee with his, almost dislodging the laptop balanced on Cas’s thighs. “We didn’t when Sam found his first, right?” Or, well, when Jess had found it. That had been last year, and Sam’s existential crisis had been _hilarious_. There were probably a lot more than one of those white hairs now, though most of them got hidden in that mop of hair Sam was still wearing.

Dean was never, ever going to encourage Chuck by saying he was thankful to the twitchy little asshole for anything. But if anyone ever put Dean to the knife about the tiny smattering of nice things that the Supreme Being had ever done for them, bringing Jessica Moore back to Sam was gonna be the one thing they got him to admit to under torture.

(He was giving God no fucking credit whatsoever for Castiel. That was all on Cas himself, every last bit of it. Dean wasn’t _ever_ letting him take it back, either.)

“We didn’t, but Jessica said his greying was a consequence of them having children.” Cas pursed his lips in thought. “She called it ‘the inevitable decadent slide into the dad bod,’ I think.”

Uh-huh. Sam really didn’t look like dad bod was gonna be a problem for him, the giant salad-eating, morning-running, yoga-doing bitch. Dean straightened up on the sofa and maybe sucked in his little bit of pie squish. “Well, Cas,” he stretched out both arms, one behind his angel and one dangling over the armrest, and heaved a huge sigh. “This looks like it’s the beginning of the end. S’been nice knowing you, buddy. I’m gonna be a geezer soon. Grey all the way down to my pubes.”

“Your hair will not be mostly grey for some time. I think you will look very distinguished,” Cas told him, serious and sweet and immensely loyal.

Dean turned, and grinned against Cas’s stubbly cheek, nibbling at the angle of his jaw just once. “Nah. I don’t care. S’just funny. I mean, you always used to look a little older than me, right? But you…” he ran a possessive hand down Cas’s lean, sleek flank, the little twitch of muscle under the flannel that Cas was wearing right over bare skin. “You don’t age. So here’s what I think.” He snickered. “Pretty soon, I’m gonna look like some gross middle aged dude hitting on this smokin’ black-haired businessman in an occasional trench coat.”

Dean considered whether this thought bothered him. Maybe before it would have. Maybe before, a lot of things about what he’d just said would have bothered him.

“Maybe before” could really go fuck itself.

Cas made a thoughtful noise in his throat, and straightened the laptop. “I suppose.”

“Hey!” Dean complained, pulling back with a jerk and almost knocking over the box of disposable cellphones he was supposed to be calibrating for hunters. “What’s the matter with you, you’re not supposed to agree with me!”

Castiel Winchester, Angel of the Lord, blinked ocean-blue eyes at him through a thin fringe of completely fake innocence. “Oh.”

*_*_*_*

Most people in the Lebanon, Kansas primary school where Mary Deanna Winchester went to first grade told Sam that he was lucky that he had so much help at home. Or they got all gushy over Dean, when he drove their SUV with the car seat setup to go pick up the kidlet. They were all about how lucky Sam and Jess were that Dean and his ‘lovely partner’—heh—were so involved with the kids.

Since those people had no idea that most of Mary’s midnight feedings had been quietly handled by an angel who _didn’t sleep_ , Dean was pretty sure they had no idea how true that was. (Sam and Jess had been on the verge of an anal-retentive-nurse-plus-law student breakdown by week three after bringing her home, and Dean had been teetering on the edge of sleeping full-term in Baby’s back seat because baby crying went _right through_ the bunker walls in a way that had to be occult. It had only taken a few exploded bottles for Cas to figure out he could warm the milk to the perfect temperature without using the bottle warmer, and he’d done his practicing in the kitchen anyway.)

So if Mary wanted to give a talk to her first grade class— _not_ parochial school; Jess had suggested and that had been a big fat resounding _fuck no_ all around—about how Castiel, Angel of Thursday, was her very favorite angel, well, yeah. Since he was Dean’s favorite angel too, he couldn’t exactly argue with that, could he? Sam had fussed about it, but eh, let everyone think she was being cutesy about her uncle’s weird name.

This was a much better idea than her giving a talk on the magical properties of gemstones in hex bags. That was her second-favorite current topic. Damn Rowena anyway.

Dean really hoped the twins would be into normal things like dinosaurs or trucks or stickers or some shit like that, because feeling stupid compared to a six-year-old was _not_ a good feeling.

Dean looked up when Sam came wandering into the kitchen. He had a baby stored in the crook of his arm like a blinking football—Cas could tell the twins apart by sight; Dean was not yet convinced that either Jess or Sam could. Gigantor was grinning the way he had the morning after he’d asked Jess to marry him. Dean, suspiciously, took another bite of his cornflakes.

“What’re you looking so happy about, Sammy?” Dean blinked, then narrowed his eyes. “Jess can’t be pregnant again _already._ Christ, dude, the twins aren’t even on solid food yet.”

That got a satisfying splutter out of his Sasquatch little brother. “ _Dean!_ ”

“I’m just sayin’,” Dean pointed his spoon at Sam’s face, then gestured with it to either-Thomas-or-Austin, who was awake and drooling all over Sam’s sleep shirt but not seeming inclined to make much of a fuss. Probably Austin, then. “Whenever you look that happy I end up having to deal with a cold bed for a couple of months.”

Not that everyone wasn’t grateful for Cas keeping the little guys happy and calm and fed at night before they outgrew that—because again, occult banshee wailing—but Cas _really_ liked helping out with babies. They also didn’t find it creepy when he watched them sleep. (Shut up, Dean was almost sure Cas didn’t watch him at nights anymore, what with being pressed against his back or his belly most of them.)

Sam made a face like before he’d had kids there would have been swear words to follow it, but he crammed them down like the good gigantic respectable lawyer dad that he was. “I don’t need to have a _reason_ to be happy these days, Dean,” he said, pointedly. “None of us do.”

Dean was still thinking over just how true that was—because it _was—_ when Sam asked, “Hey, you seen Cas this morning?” He looked around the kitchen like there might be a trench coat and tie folded behind the cookie jar on the countertop.

Yeah, they had a freakin’ cookie jar. It was always full, too. Dean took pride in that shit.

Dean shook his head, and lifted his bowl to gulp milk. On weekdays Cas stayed in and waited for Dean to wake up before unspooning himself from around his back, but on a lot of weekend mornings he did his own thing. Sometimes he fluttered off to Heaven to crack the whip—heh heh—over some angels, but it was more likely that he and Jack had gone and watched the sunrise, and were now feeding birds in Russia or something, the big feathery saps. “Nah, what’s up?”

“Nothing really.” Sam fumbled the two baby bottles he was pulling out of the fridge one-handed, but managed to catch them on his hip. He waved Dean down when Dean started to stand. “No, I got it. Me an’ Jess are taking the kids to that park on the other side of town, the one with the butterfly sanctuary, and I thought he might want to come with.”

Dean reached over into the fruit bowl and grabbed an orange. (Okay, so maybe he would have gone for another bowl of cornflakes normally. _Maybe_ that talk the other day had made him think about spending a little more time in the gym, too, now that they didn’t spend as much time running away from things trying to eat them anymore. _Maybe_.) He let his silence speak for itself.

Sam scowled. Probably-Austin blew a spit bubble that rolled down his fat chin. The soft terrycloth rag tucked into Dean’s back pocket practically itched him right through his jeans when Sam didn’t bother to wipe it off. “Oh, come on, Dean, you know Mary-girl doesn’t go running off when Cas is around,” he grumbled.

Dean snorted a laugh. Uh-huh, that was more like it. “What’re you even gonna do when the other two start walking? You and Jess are gonna be really outnumbered, then.”

Sam smiled over his shoulder as he set the bottles into the warmer and plugged it in one-handed. Some of his hair had escaped from that stupid little ponytail of his. “Dean, it’s still going to be five of us against three. Six, when Jack’s visiting.”

Dean didn’t bother to answer as he peeled his orange in long strips. Just because Sam was, of course, about as right as could be—Dean would kill, die, and change goddamned diapers for the munchkins—didn’t mean that he was giving Sam the satisfaction of hearing it out loud.

“You’ve got that seminar you’re teaching this afternoon, right?” Sam asked. “It’s gonna be a nice day, too bad.”

Yeah, but, well, that was what happened. Dean did his teaching mostly online and to adults who actually had day jobs, so there were a lot of evenings and weekends. He didn’t really mind, though. Hell, it was how he’d gotten _his_ degree, who was he to complain?

Dean waved an orange slice as the warmer dinged and Sam extracted out one of the two baby bottles. “S’fine. You guys have fun, I got tomorrow off. I’ll let Cas know about the park if I see him.” Sam found praying to Cas about the everyday stuff weird. So did Dean, so he tried not to think about it that way, even though it was still a faster way to reach him than anything else—and didn’t come with any of Cas’s horrible emoji habit.

Still, Cas had told him long ago that he liked it when Dean thought about him, so Dean tried to do it loudly now and again. Sometimes Cas heard the details in it, sometimes he didn’t, but like he’d said, once—it was all about intention.

What kind of intention Cas was getting from “ _Heya, Feathers, Sam’s really gonna stab you if Mary applies for a parent change or something ‘cause she likes you better than him,_ ” Dean wasn’t sure, but it still made him smirk.

Dean thumped Sam on the shoulder and rubbed Almost-Definitely-Austin’s fuzzy head as he left Sammy to the first feeding of the morning, still munching on the last of his orange slices. (They were pretty good, actually.)

Sam really was a little too suspiciously cheerful, though, Dean thought. He was definitely up to something, and it wasn’t just that the twins were sleeping through the night now. They’d called a total truce on the pranks at _least_ until Mary was old enough, so that couldn’t be it…

Dean didn’t know how the Hell Sam had missed Cas, though, because he was sitting tucked right into one of the chairs in the war room with a book in front of him. Cas was still quiet, yeah, but he was still also six feet of pretty angel, and Sammy must have gone wandering right past him on the way from the bedrooms to the kitchen.

(Dad brain. It was a real thing. Jack was living proof that it could happen to angels, so, sure, it could happen to Sammy.)

Cas had his back to him, and he must have been outside somewhere far away earlier, because he was still wearing his familiar long beige trench coat, the lines of it still loose on his broad shoulders. The sight of that always, always put a smile on Dean’s face, and he picked up his pace.

Cas turned and smiled back at him. “Hello, Dean.”

Dean’s knees wobbled. He dropped his orange slice. Hell, he almost went ass-over-teakettle over a completely stationary chair that was right in his line of sight.

Cas cocked his head quizzically at whatever the expression was on Dean’s face as Dean peeled himself up off the back of the chair. Then Dean’s angel ran his fingers carefully through his short hair, pushing it back into familiar unruly spikes.

The thick sprinkles of silver that ran like stars across the dark of both his temples, disappearing to the faintest scatter of grey like kisses at his hairline, were not at all familiar.

Cas, all mussed-up, rumple-haired and soft-eyed in the morning, was something to kiss. Cas, smiling with his lips just barely parted, that way that showcased his tiny, unchanging little crow’s feet, his blue eyes and clever mouth, was something to lick.

Castiel looking exactly, _perfectly_ like himself, a gorgeous little badass, but with his dark temples spackled with a silver more generous than Dean’s and that familiar trench coat draped over his shoulders was… was…

“I thought perhaps… is this better?” Cas asked, hopefully.

“Holy _fu-uck_ ,” Dean breathed.

Yeah. Dean took it all back. Getting older was _fucking awesome_.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this entire thing was the product of me thinking "Cas finds a grey hair on Dean and decides that he has to change his vessel to match--just a little bit." ;) I'm also headcanoning Sam as the kind of parent who completely has a first-baby freak out, and it's to EVERYONE'S surprise that Cas steps in...
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! :)


End file.
